Category: People on the Move

Talari Networks, a San Jose, California-based WAN reliability and application performance specialist, has hired Randy Schirman, a former Riverbed Technology (RVBD) channel chief and 25-year industry veteran, to head its worldwide sales and channel programs.

Schirman, who reports to Emerick Woods, Talari president, is tasked with building relationships with customers, solution providers, distributors and resellers globally. He is considered a key piece in helping Talari to expand and enable its reseller base, officials said.

“Randy’s decision to join Talari is validation of our proven and award-winning patented adaptive private networking technology, and the projected growth and investment in wide area networking, as organizations seek to achieve superior quality with business-critical applications such as voice, video, cloud, VDI, ERP, mobile, etc., that traverse the corporate WAN,” said Woods. “Randy will be vital in helping to expand and enable our reseller base and lead our sales team to new heights, and we’re pleased to welcome Randy to our executive team.”

Prior to joining Talari, Schirman served as Riverbed’s senior vice president of Worldwide Channels and was part of its leadership team since 2008, where he specialized in developing key alliances. Before Riverbed, Schirman held down Citadel Security Software’s vice president of Sales post.

“The traditional WAN is evolving rapidly as critical applications drive demand for increased bandwidth and improved reliability at an affordable cost,” said Schirman. “Talari’s leading-edge solution allows businesses the ability to integrate low-cost broadband Internet links such as DSL and cable modem, which complement or even replace high-cost proprietary MPLS networks, to create an intelligent WAN, providing best-in-class performance with unparalleled ROI,” he said. “It’s an honor to be part of the team that’s setting the standard by which all future intelligent solutions will be measured.”

Talari’s WAN solution aggregates multiple diverse networks into a virtual WAN and continuously adapts traffic in real time based on the availability and quality of network paths, ultimately resulting in cost savings over single-provider networks and improving business continuity.

It didn’t take Dell long after closing its $24.8 billion private equity buyout to shake things up. On Nov. 18, the vendor appointed a new global channel chief, restructured its sales operation and named a new head of its North American organization.

In an emailed letter to channel partners obtained by The VAR Guy, Greg Davis, Dell partner program founder and channel chief since the program’s formal inception in 2007, said Cheryl Cook, formerly Dell’s Enterprise Solutions vice president, will assume the channel leadership role as Global Channels and Alliances vice president.

Davis will move to Software and Peripherals as vice president.

“Cheryl brings a wealth of experience in Enterprise Technology sales, both direct and Channel sales to the role,” Davis wrote in his note to partners. In addition to leading Dell’s enterprise go-to-market strategy and sales coverage, Cook’s background includes a stint as Americas sales senior vice president at Sun Microsystems, where she headed Sun’s Americas channel organization.

In her new role, Cook is responsible for defining and delivering innovative channel programs, training and certification, global marketing programs and supplying a steady hand to the vendor’s channel, alliances, strategic ISVs and OEMs.

Sales Restructuring

Dell also has restructured how channel sales fits into its overall sales operation, placing direct and indirect sales under one umbrella in effort to improve sales engagements in the field and set a stronger foundation for channel sales.

“We’ve heard from you that there was room to improve engagement with Dell’s core sales teams,” wrote Davis, “So, as the next step in our growth together we are moving our channel sales organization deeper into Dell’s regional organizational structure.”

Here’s what’s changing with the channels reorganization:

• Regional channel leaders now will report to regional Dell sales leadership. In North America, Channels Vice President Frank Vitagliano and Global Commercial Channel Sales and Programs Vice President Jim DeFoe now report to Dell’s head of North American sales.
• Similarly, Laurent Binetti in EMEA and Richard Lee in Asia Pacific/Japan will report to regional sales leads.

Staying the same:

• Channel strategy of focusing on the data center, investing in training, ease of doing business and partnership stays as it was.
• PartnerDirect will stay as the umbrella program for end-to-end and point solutions.

Davis said that by directing Dell’s regional channel heads to report to regional sales, “they will be able to integrate more closely with our sales and product teams, which will allow for faster feedback between partners and business unit leaders.” Translated: Dell is trying to shore up its field engagement to reduce channel conflict and strengthen channel sales.

According to a CRN report, Dell also named Bill Rodrigues, formerly its Global Business vice president and general manager and a 14-year company veteran, as president of Dell North America, a business unit that accounted for some $24 billion in revenue in 2012. Vitagliano and DeFoe will report to Rodrigues, according to the account. Rodrigues replaces Paul Henri Ferrand, who held the post for the past 16 months, the report said.

“It’s been a privilege to work with you all to build Dell’s channel program from the ground up,” wrote Davis. “Your input has played a vital role in bringing us to this point today where the PartnerDirect program is strong and stable enough to push further into Dell’s go-to-market strategy.”

Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers shared the stage with Cisco President Rob Lloyd today in New York. During this extremely important moment — the Insieme acquisition, the Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) launch, and the Software-defined Networking (SDN) chatter — Chambers and Lloyd had equal stage time on their own while also hosting customer and partner panels. It made The VAR Guy wonder: Was this also Rob Lloyd’s audition — in front of Wall Street — to potentially succeed Chambers as CEO?

As you may recall, Chambers back in September 2012 said he planned to retire in two to four years. The succession plan included a list of roughly 10 Cisco candidates. Fast forward to the present and a successor could come in one to three years.

Cisco CEO Candidates…

Last year, The VAR Guy assumed Rob Lloyd was the leading candidate to succeed Chambers. Lloyd, after all, is constantly at Chambers’ side during major conferences such as Cisco Partner Summit. Chambers often defers to Lloyd to answer technology and business questions from the media, financial and tech analysts.

But in recent months, The VAR Guy has heard more and more whispers about Chuck Robbins taking the lead in the CEO succession race. Robbins, the pundits said, is a natural salesman who also knows how to work a crowd.

Big Apple, Big Spotlight, Big Launch

Still, today’s crowd in New York represented the most important Cisco gathering in recent years. Investors, analysts, customers and partners gathered to hear about Cisco’s most important platform push — ACI — in quite some time.

• Do you remember the shift from shared networks to switching?
• Do you also recall the push to converged servers, storage and networking?

ACI, in some respects, could be even bigger than both of those. The reason: Big rivals and startups are pitching software-defined networking (SDN) to disrupt Cisco’s traditional networking business. Cisco has a somewhat different spin, insisting that next-generation networks must leverage the power of both hardware and software, using an ACI approach.

Who’s On Stage?

So for this huge moment — a potential defining day in Cisco’s history — the company essentially put two executives on stage:

• John Chambers
• Rob Lloyd

The other Cisco CEO candidates — folks like CTO Padmasree Warrior and Senior VP Chuck Robbins — were not on stage, to the best of The VAR Guy’s knowledge.

So how did Lloyd do during his time in the spotlight today? The answer is mixed. He ultimately got the message across — partners and customers want easier-to-manage, flexible, scalable, application-centric networks. But at times he struggled to find the right words; speaking on the fly with panelists isn’t his strength. That’s especially apparent when compared to Chambers, who has the gift of gab when speaking one-on-one or with a crowd.

The VAR Guy Predicts…

Still, public speaking is only a small part of the CEO job. Lloyd has tons of talent on the development and sales fronts. If The VAR Guy had to guess, both Lloyd and Robbins are the leading candidates for the CEO post.But that’s just a guess… for now…

Juniper Networks (JNPR) has combined its global partner organization with its field marketing team to better serve its channel partners and amplify demand within the channel. Juniper Worldwide VP of Field Marketing Matt Hurley will take on the role of vice president for the newly formed Worldwide Partner Marketing group.

While his own job responsibilities will not differ much as a result of the integration, Hurley said the change will allow Juniper to better align its marketing development funds and help partners to succeed within the channel. He also emphasized the importance of taking the time to listen to the concerns of Juniper’s partner community to amplify demand and ultimately allow partners to have input into the company’s product strategy.

“We really see this as a logical step in our strategy to develop a single unified go-to-market organization for all channels,” said Hurley in an interview with The VAR Guy. “We think it’s important because it unifies the entire organization and enhances our ability to support our partners in all regions around the world, and it really ensures that partners are the integral part of every product, solution and program.”

Juniper remains dedicated to increasing partner enablement and will continue to improve its overall investment in partner strategy, he said. And despite reports of financial decreases in Juniper’s marketing division and news of layoffs hitting the company, Hurley said that he is working to increase the global partner marketing team both in personnel and marketing dollars as part of his new role.

“My No. 1 priority over the next 100 days is to take time and visit our partners,” said Hurley. “I think you’ll see us emerge with a theme of making it easier for our partners to do business with us as well as focusing the marketing organization and channeling our dollars and resources around how we can help our partners generate demand for their businesses.”

Tech Data (TECD) added to its executive lineup this week with the appointment of two industry veterans to its mobile and Advanced Infrastructure Solutions (AIS) divisions. The distributor has tapped former Brightstar president and COO Patrick M. Stokes as vice president of Tech Data Mobile Solutions and longtime CDW and PCM executive Maurice O. Hamilton stepping in as vice president of Technical Services.

In their new roles, Stokes and Hamilton will be charged with leading the strategic direction for Tech Data Mobile Solutions in the United States and leading the strategic direction of the company’s presales support and systems engineering capabilities, respectively.

“We are pleased to welcome Patrick to the Tech Data Mobile Solutions team,” said Rod Millar, senior vice president, Worldwide, Tech Data Mobile Solutions, in a statement. “Patrick’s track record and experience will continue the strong momentum we have built in mobile distribution and services globally. As we continue to grow the Americas business within the mobile space and leverage our leading position in Europe, Patrick’s experience will prove to be invaluable.”

In addition to his tenure at Brightstar, Stokes brings with him 24 years of experience in the mobile telecommunications industry, most recently serving as president and CEO of Sage Brothers Holdings, a company dedicated to increasing shareholder value through the acquisition and conversion of target firms to minority business enterprises, according to the release. He has also held senior executive roles in sales and distribution with Verizon (VZ) and Sprint (S).

Similarly, Hamilton has more than 25 years of experience with distributors, including the aforementioned CDW and PCM, where he held a variety of senior and executive level sales and technical services positions. He also has direct experience selling and managing teams selling solutions and services at the end user level, according to Tech Data.

“Maurice is a proven leader with extensive knowledge and experience building technical and professional services capabilities, and he brings Tech Data a history of superior leadership in the IT channel,” said Chuck Bartlett, senior vice president, AIS, at Tech Data. “Specifically, Maurice will continue to position AIS as a leader in data center solutions and technical support of our channel partners.”

Tintri has appointed former VMware (VMW) executive Andrew Lee as its latest executive vice president of Alliances, leading the virtualization and cloud environment storage provider’s strategic alliances and supporting new business development and corporate strategy initiatives.

“Andy joins Tintri at a time where the interest in the market working with us is at an all-time high,” said Ken Klein, chairman and CEO of Tintri, in a statement. “His experience is a perfect match for us at this stage in our development, and the relationships he will develop with technology partners will be of immense value to support our hyper growth.”

Lee joins during a time of rapid growth, Tintri noted, with customers deploying more than 200,000 virtual machines on its Tintri storage systems as well as consecutive triple digit quarterly growth year over year. Prior to his appointment at Tintri, Lee worked as an investor at Battery Ventures in addition to tenure as a director of corporate development and strategic investment at VMware. His most recent position was with CloudBees, where he worked to raise Series C financing for the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company.

“I’ve been an admirer of Tintri from its inception. The company has already established itself as the only smart storage solution born of virtualization and for the cloud,” said Lee. “It’s the world-class team and customers’ passion for the products that brought me to Tintri. I look forward to helping drive our global expansion and continued success.”

Tintri recently unified its regional partner programs under a single banner with the introduction of its first global partner program back in April. Lee’s appointment as head of Strategic Alliances will no doubt help Tintri to further its partner network as the company shifts more focus toward expanding its influence within the channel and making a name for itself as a major player amongst competitors.

Citrix (CTXS) has appointed IT industry veteran and former Symantec executive Brian Dye as the company’s latest group vice president and general manager of the company’s mobile platforms group. In his new role, Dye will be tasked with driving Citrix’s success in the highly competitive mobile device management and enterprise mobility management spheres while improving BYOD security and management.

“Brian’s strong qualifications in security and information management, including data mobility, are uniquely suited to further our customers’ mobility priorities,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, senior vice president and general manager of Citrix’s Enterprise and Service Provider division, in a statement. “He will provide great value to all of our customers, helping them succeed in a time when secure enterprise mobility is transforming how business is done.”

In addition to helping Citrix to grow its MDM and EMM solutions, Dye will be essential in working with the company’s flagship XenMobile solution for the Mobile Workspace Suite, according to the press release. The XenMobile solution is the Citrix-flavored version of a secure corporate file and application manager, similar to solutions offered by AirWatch, MobileIron and Good Technology.

Prior to his appointment at Citrix, Dye spent more than 10 years in various leadership roles at Symantec (SYMC) in product management, engineering, support and operations, including senior VP of the company’s Information Security Group. He has also worked in various engineering, program management and business development roles at Xerox, Procter and Gamble and E Ink. He will be based out of Citrix’s Santa Clara offices.

“As organizations mobilize their business, security and control are top of mind, and IT is increasingly turning to MDM or EMM solutions. Citrix is a leader in these areas and uniquely positioned to help customers meet these pressing challenges,” said Dye. “I am very excited to be part of the Citrix team where I can leverage my experience to help customers advance their secure enterprise mobility strategy.”

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) partnering automation provider Relayware named John Benecke its new chief financial officer, where he will be responsible for overseeing the company’s finance, accounting and operations functions. As CFO, Benecke will also lead Relayware’s strategic business planning, M&A activities, IP protection and organizational performance.

During his career in the IT industry, Benecke has garnered nearly two decades of financial experience, including a 10-year period where he worked for several high-growth, VC-backed businesses in the medical technology sector and other areas, according to Relayware. Benecke has previously served as CFO for several other IT companies including Business Logic Systems, Cellnovo and ApaTech.

“John’s solid financial leadership background will enable us to accelerate the planning and execution of our business strategies, so we can achieve both our short- and long-term goals with confidence,” said Mike Morgan, Relayware chief executive officer in a statement. “Not only is John joining Relayware at a pivotal point in our company history, but also at a time when many savvy businesses have recognized the untapped growth potential within their channel ecosystem.”

Relayware may not be a recognizable name, but chances are you’ve used the company’s technology if you’ve ever been a member of a channel partner program. The company specializes in partner-centric applications, including partner portals, training, sales and marketing tools. The company promises “greater partner engagement, productivity and return on indirect channel investment.”

Relayware hopes Benecke will use his experience in the financial world to help accelerate the company’s market position within the industry and increase its market share among SaaS customers.

“Its not too often that you find a company that is so well poised to capitalize on a hot, growing market trend, and also has an enviable roster of many satisfied customers that have leveraged its technology for years,” said Benecke. “As a finance professional, the value Relayware delivers to its customers through its partnering automation platform is undeniable. I am excited to build on this business foundation with new growth strategies and stronger operational discipline.”